The Avenue of Sacrifice
by Bespectacled Rex
Summary: The scions of Terra's most august noble families gather upon the Avenue of Sacrifice, their destination the Ascensor's Gate. Since time immemorial it has been their holiest of rites; to answer the summons of the Imperial Household itself. The greatest of the noble families now march to offer their infant sons to the Adeptus Custodes, guardians of the Emperor Himself.
1. The Avenue of Sacrifice

An eclectic collection of one-hundred-thirty-two of the daughters of Terra's old blood led the procession formed by all of the noble families which called Terra home along the flawless marble flagstones of the Avenue of Sacrifice in one of their most ancient rituals. This was their holiest of rites, the very bedrock upon which their identity as Terra's most august children and their imagined superiority over all other mortals was built. Since time immemorial they had performed this rite, this ritualised sacrifice of their infant boys at the Ascensor's Gate.

Clad within the finest, most ostentatious footwear one would find within the Imperium nearly twenty-thousand feet retraced the steps of their forebearers. The Avenue of Sacrifice was wide, wide enough for almost two hundred of the garishly dressed aristocrats to stride comfortably alongside one another. The marble flagstones they trod upon were cut and then laid with such exacting consideration they would have appeared seamless if it were not for the engraved strips of gold each flagstone was edged with.

Towering statues loomed above them from pedestals of stone-faced with gold. Each statue was a macabre spectacle that did well to emphasise that this was the Avenue of _Sacrifice_; heroes whose names were unknown to all who beheld them stood impaled by alien spears, gored by traitorous blades, or eviscerated by weapons that had not been seen for millennia. Painstaking care had been taken by their sculptors to depict the horror of every wound, whether it be the intestines of a man spilling from his stomach or the gristle connected to a woman's detached limbs. Each had been carved from stone taken from separate worlds that were, or at some point had been, apart of the Imperium.

Across the thousands of statues, the single unifying feature of them all was the look of hateful defiance etched into their ruined faces and invoked by their resolute stances. Their bodies may have been broken beyond survival, but they still stood valiantly against the enemies of humanity, ready to sacrifice their lives for the Imperium without a shred of hesitation. Few who looked upon them knew if they had been carved to glorify true, flesh-and-blood heroes of the Imperium or if the figures depicted were little more then an artist's imagination.

Many of those that were a part of the procession had tread under the defiant gazes of those statues before. Within the past century alone this same scene had played out twice; once thirty-years earlier and again sixty-years before that. Behind the women who stood at the head of the procession were the women who had, once, stood in their place those many decades ago.

For many who mingled within the mass of aristocrats, this was a moment of glory, of fulfilled duty and the closest to divinity many of them would ever reach. The sacrificed children would not be theirs, the burden of it would not fall upon their shoulders. It was not their sacrifice to make but one they demanded others make all the same. They had no hand in the glory, no true part to play in all of it besides to have been born with the correct blood pumping through their veins. They celebrated the sacrifice of their kin as if they had performed some heroic deed themselves, uncaring for the thoughts and feelings of those who would suffer.

The women who led the procession were the ones who would, one way or another, pay the price in the name of their family's glory. For them, the women who had taken their place at the procession's forefront and the stone-faced women who followed behind them this was a moment of growing hollowness. For them, it was as if a black hole had opened within their hearts and was slowly draining them of all emotions, leaving little more then an endless pit at their core. They knew that every step forward which they took, that the further within the shadow of the Imperial Palace they were, the closer they would be to the end of this journey and all which that entailed.

They were not ignorant of the gravity of the duty they executed, of course. From the greatest of the matriarchs and patriarchs to the lowest progeny of their families, all were aware of the future which awaited the infants held tightly to the chests of their mothers. All knew of the sacrifice, which some called the highest of honours, that would be made when they reached the end of the aptly named Avenue of Sacrifice.

The gathered aristocrats were jubilant, whether from the sentiment that this was the highest honour in the Imperium or the cynical assessment that this bettered their odds within the endless power struggle that engulfed the aristocracy. Every child sacrificed at the Ascensor's Gate was one less in the line of succession, one less corpse for them to climb over to reach the top. Such was the way of the nobility upon every world within the Imperium, and for all their excess and grandiosity it was no different amongst the nobility of Terra itself.

Although terror and fear had begun to grip the hearts of the mothers who held their babes tight to their chests, a great deal of it was not fear for the future of their children. For many, it was fear for themselves; the terror of _not_ bringing forward a child worthy of sacrifice far outweighed the terror of losing a child. It was the exception, rather than the rule, to be far more afraid of losing one's child then of whatever fate awaited them afterwards.

One of the women who was an exception to the rule was, in truth, less a woman and more a girl. She had only just passed her sixteenth year and was easily the youngest of the mothers at the forefront of the procession. Much like her, her son was also the youngest of his peers; she had given birth to him only twenty days ago. He had yet to even be given a name, though she loved him fiercely in spite of how little time she had had with him.

Like all of them, she had known for months that this day would come, ever since the summons had been given to their families by the Imperial Household. She had prayed and, in those prayers, she had begged Him to let her child be born too late even if it had meant prolonging the pain and misery of her labour. She had believed those prayers had been answered, that He had seen the love she bore for the life within her and would see to it that he was born too late to qualify for selection. Seventeen days late, she had given birth to her child in the ancient palace her family called home.

Her family's matriarch had shattered her dreams of raising her son when she had told her that he was still fit and acceptable for the ceremony. She had begged everyone she could think of, pleaded with them, tried to bribe some of them, and threatened them all to no avail, and when temporal forces had failed, she had once more turned to prayers for her son's salvation. If He had listened before, He had chosen not to listen then.

All one-hundred-thirty-two of the mothers at the head of the procession knew the two fates that awaited them. The fate of the blessed mothers and fathers whose children were selected was to be well taken care of for their entire lives, elevated above their already lavish lifestyles by their family's matriarchs and patriarchs. They would lose a child, yes, but for many of them, a child was ultimately replaceable. Mothers though they may be, at heart many of them were still little more than the egocentric aristocrats that believed themselves superior to mongrel humanity. In comparison, the fate which awaited the mothers and fathers whose children were deemed unfit had never been openly spoken of. The fate of the children which had been deemed unfit was never spoken of at all.

The gilded Ascensor's Gate now loomed before them. At its heart was the mighty Aquila itself, raised from the surface of the gate with large slabs of solid gold. The towering walls of the Imperial Palace stretched high above the gate itself and out to either side of the gate into the distance. Upon the wall's parapets stood His sentinels, their golden forms obscured by distance and rendered into little more than smears of colour.

A platform of solid gold had been placed in the centre of the Avenue, its bulk looming up from the marble flagstones. A thousand ancient scenes of battle had been engraved upon the platform alongside archaic symbology and patterns, and precious gems studded the surface of its sides. The platform was not nearly as wide as the Avenue itself, though it was still wide enough for perhaps seventy to stand across comfortably. Ten tiers of golden steps led up to the top of the platform, where dozens of black-robed serfs stood patiently.

The front of the procession came to a stop a few dozen feet away from the base of the platform. Neither the serfs nor the aristocrats they stood above said a word to one another and the silence stretched on until it was broken by the grinding of ancient machinery from within the Palace's walls. The Ascensor's Gate opened, its golden façade splitting to allow figures hidden by the bulk of the platform to emerge.

The first sign of what had exited was fifty crimson, horsehair plumages cresting over the edge of the platform. The fifty plumages then became fifty gold and gem-encrusted helmets, then pauldrons and breastplates appeared and soon enough fifty golden towers stood at the far end of the platform. Their armour was of the most exquisite make any of them had, or would ever again, lay eyes on. Symbols whose meanings had been lost to all but the ones who bore them were etched or embossed into the armour's surface alongside finely cut gems. Behind them came serfs wearing black and gold-edged silk robes, each of them carrying the signature staff weapons of their masters.

Each of the Custodes was the image of physical perfection, their bodies enhanced by His will to become something beyond human. It was to them, the golden Custodians of the Emperor Himself, that the gathered nobility had sacrificed their children to for millennia, and it was to them they had gathered to sacrifice their children to once more.

The serfs who had stood silently at the edge of the platform had descended the golden steps when all attention had been fixed upon their masters. There were forty-four of them in total, dressed in robes the same make and colouring of the serfs who had appeared behind the Custodes. They approached the line of mothers and babes, faces etched in cool reassurance that did little to reassure anyone. There was little in the way of ceremony in the process; each serf approached a woman, gestured forwards, then waited. They never spoke, or if they did no one ever heard it beyond the one they had spoken to.

It would take three groups to get through all one-hundred-thirty-two of them. It was equal parts blessing and curse that she had not been selected for the first group. She, along with two-quarters of her peers, was left to stew in their growing fear and anxieties at the base of the platform.

The first group ascended the golden steps, their infants held tightly to their chests. Once at the top, they advanced a few feet forwards and then halted at a line of black metal that ran from one end of the platform to the other. Most, if not all, of the gathered nobility could see them standing upon the summit of the platform. The weight of expectation would crush them if they had not been trained from childhood to bear it. Of course, it was not their families that made them anxious on the platform.

Forty-four of the fifty Custodes now advanced upon them, weaponless but terrifying to them all the same. Infants wailed as the subdued humming of power armour jarred them awake or shook their fragile frames. The mothers were not much better, in truth. Fear that was more instinctual then conscious gripped the hearts of all the nobility who beheld the Custodes, from the haughtiest of lords to the most craven of their lot. For those the Custodes approached, the feeling was far more intense.

The Custodes executed their holy task without speaking openly. There was only a total of two-dozen times in the ritual's recorded history that one of His Custodians had deigned to speak to the mortals before them. Each of those times had been thoroughly recorded; every detail from the most minor and inconsequential thing to the words themselves had been written into the histories of Terra's nobility.

Their approach was measured. To all of the mortal eyes that beheld them their every step was perfect, each stride the same carefully measured movement. So similar was each stride one could almost delude themselves into thinking the Custodes were automata, that their legs were little more then well-calibrated pistons moving with the exactness of a machine. Such thoughts were easily dissuaded by their armoured forms extraordinary grace, the lightness of each step, the perfection of the human form that could only be attained by one of their order.

They came to a halt as one before the waiting mothers. The smell of incense clung to their armoured bodies, the scent overpowering even the strongest of their perfumes. Demigods stood only a handful of feet away from them, and even the tallest of the assembled noble ladies only reached the base of their gilded breastplates. As one, the demigods raised their hands up and brought them before the women with their gauntleted palms facing the heavens. Long rectangles of black velvet were stretched across their palms and concealed the gold beneath.

Reluctantly, the mothers placed their children into the palms of the demigods. The Custodes were so large they barely needed a single palm to fully support the infant's place in their grasp. The Custodes fixed their attentions to the babes laying upon their velvet-covered palms, helmets angled downwards with their ruby lenses fixed unerringly onto the forms of the infants.

What the Custodes looked for when they peered down at the children held within their palms was little more than supposition amongst the nobility. What traits did they look for? How did they gauge the worthiness of an infant? None knew the truth; none knew what made a child worthy or unworthy. They only knew that a child was worthy, or they were not. Many took this to mean that the unworthy children were defective in some extraordinary way, tainted by something they could not understand, and which could not be allowed to fester within their bloodlines. Many extended these failings to the children's parents, and they saw the treatment of the disease within one to be the same as the treatment of the other.

Of the forty-four infants that had been brought upon the platform and examined, only thirteen would be deemed worthy. The rectangles of black velvet that hung from the hands of the Custodes were brought up to carefully wrap around the children's forms, shrouding them in velvet. The Custodes who held them then swiftly retreated back across the platform, descended the unseen steps on the other side and disappeared into the maw of the Ascensor's Gate. The thirty-one infants remaining were placed gently into the shaking hands of their mothers, the Custodes who had held them merely retreating back to the other side of the platform. The unworthiness, the corrupted nature, of the thirty-one infants and their parents would be excised from the families in the days to come.

For now, though, all of the mothers descended the steps as one, all of them weeping freely. Few of them wept with anything but fear and terror gripping their hearts. They passed through the line of their remaining peers and were swallowed by the mass of women who had once endured the same process, women whose duty now was to offer some semblance of comfort to the women who came after them.

The forty-four serfs once again moved amongst the mothers. Women were once more approached and sent forward. And once more, she was not chosen. Forty-four of them were left, standing as the last to be chosen, forced to suffer the longest before the nightmare of it all would be over. The chosen women ascended the gilded steps, their forms wracked with terror as the reality of it all grasped their hearts in a vice-like grip and squeezed.

It was impossible to tell if the Custodes who had taken the place of the thirteen that had left truly were _new_, or if the ones who had left had simply deposited their charges and returned. In the end, what mattered to the women who ascended those golden steps was that there was once more fifty of the giants standing before them. The fear their presence had wrought from a distance had festered in their hearts and now that the women stood before the towers of gold those fears amplified. They could not help the shaking that overtook them as the Custodes advanced once more.

Gauntlets covered in black velvet rose before the mothers, just as they had before. The willingness of the first group to hand over their babes was hardly present in these mothers, and for every child placed in the massive palms of the Custodes, another was scooped from the grasps of their mothers with a care that was belied by the Custodes gargantuan size and strength. Ruby lenses peered down to examine the precious cargo they held, a myriad of mortal eyes staring back with curiosity. Of all the mortals present it was the infants who grew to bear the presence of the Custodes the best, the fear that gripped the hearts of all the others finding little hold on the hearts of creature's incapable of truly comprehending fear yet.

Twenty-five of the infants were carefully swaddled with the black velvet and carried away to never _truly_ be seen again. The forty-four mothers descended the steps to once more be swallowed by the throng of their forebearers.

The serfs approached the last forty-four mothers. A serf whose face was sketched in a benign smile of false reassurance grasped her shoulder lightly, gestured forward with the other hand and then stepped back. Her legs moved even though she wished they wouldn't and then she was ascending golden steps and stopping along with all the others at a line of blackened metal. At some unseen signal forty-four of the golden giants began their measured, almost casual, advance.

Her breath was low and quick, the steel in her heart that had set her against her own family disappearing in the face of the approaching tower of gold. The approaching Custodes was twice her height, that and more. She knew the power that rested in its limbs, she had heard the stories since childhood. It presented a thin veneer of civility and placidity, tried to conceal the extraordinary violence it could enact with nary a thought.

It brought its golden arms up from their position at its side, its hands raised palms up beneath the black velvet that covered them. Her terror did not stop her eyes from meeting its hateful red lenses. She knew something intelligent stared back, she could feel the inhuman eyes that peered back at her from behind those heartless red lenses. Perhaps it could read her thoughts, or perhaps it was simply so used to taking children from their mothers that it knew a recalcitrant one when it saw one. She did not see it move, did not see or even feel how it had ripped her precious, pale-skinned baby from her grasp; one second its palms were empty, the next second her child was being held aloft on a cloud of black velvet.

She wanted with all her heart to reach out, to reclaim her child from the cold hands of the monster before her. Her muscles refused to move, refused to obey her; her body was locked in fear as she watched the hateful lenses the colour of blood analyze her baby. He didn't scream or cry while resting in the grasp of the Custodes, no, he gave a childish giggle and her heart constricted at the noise. His grey eyes stared up curiously into the crimson lenses of his captor, blissfully unaware that his fate was being decided. The Custodes stared back into those tiny grey eyes for what felt like hours to her, scrutinising her child and looking for something that only it and its kind knew about.

The rest of the world fell aside, the weeping mothers stretched to either side of her, the heartless golden creatures, all of it fell into a void and disappeared. Her world became singularly fixed upon the precious life held within the claws of the golden beast before her. Her eyes only beheld her baby's pale skin, the grey eyes that stared into the eyes of a monster instead of her own, the tufts of golden hair that quivered in the wind. Some part of her, some deep, unwanted, instinctual part of her reared its ugly head and told her that this would be the last time she ever laid eyes on her baby boy.

The head of the golden monster inclined up; its crimson lenses once more fixed upon her. The movement had shocked her out of her stupor, broken the attention she had fixed upon her child and stolen it. Her eyes became locked with the intelligent, heartless eyes hidden away by lenses the colour of human blood. She could not look away from it. She was painfully aware that it had not returned her child to her arms, though she was only passingly aware that it had yet to cover it in the velvet shroud.

"**He is strong. He will survive.**"

Its voice was deep, impossibly so, and it was possessed with the most refined tone she had ever heard. It was the voice of command, the voice of one of the Emperor's chosen protectors. For all that, though, she almost believed that it was unsure of itself. The feeling was hazy in her mind, the reasoning not quite there yet the thought came to her all the same. It was not unsure of the words, those booming words that brought her more reassurance then anything else had or ever would, no, it sounded… it sounded as if it had no idea how to comfort someone. As if it was unsure of the actual process of reassurance, of how to tell someone that something was going to be okay and have them believe it.

She believed it all the same. The fear did not dissipate, her anger did not wane, but she believed it when it said her son would survive whatever fate awaited him. She said nothing as it wrapped her child in the black velvet, her mind numb as it turned around and strode away from her.

Part of her wanted to follow, in spite of the reassurance that her son would live. To chase it and take her child back, but she knew it would be futile. She wanted to do it anyway, of course, she was more than willing to die to see her child for even another second. Firm hands stopped her, and the serf who had guided her up the steps appeared in her vision, face still sketched in the same benign smile of reassurance. The hands pivoted her around, back towards the Ascensor's Gate and her child. Perhaps the serf had read her mind, or perhaps the serf too was simply proficient enough at its child-stealing duties that it could tell when a mother planned on doing something ill-advised.

She descended the steps in a daze, her legs moving of their own volition. There was no line of awaiting mothers for her to pass through, instead, she was quickly swallowed up and surrounded by a group of the eldest of the women who had performed the same task she had. That this was special treatment, that the reassurance given to her by the Custodes had been heard by all and that she had been unwittingly marked out as above her peers, was lost on her at this point. She would not learn this fact of her new life until later after they had left the Avenue and returned to their palatial complexes across Terra.

As the procession turned and began the long journey back down the Avenue of Sacrifice, the golden platform was rolled through the Ascensor's Gate with unseen mechanisms. The final fifty Custodes and the nine children they had selected from the last group, along with their army of black-clad serfs, had already disappeared into the Imperial Palace.

Forty-seven of Terra's noble sons had been selected to ascend to the ranks of the Custodes, amongst them, a grey-eyed infant only twenty days old.


	2. The Catacombs of Hegemon

_**AN: This was originally a one-shot. That is no longer the case.**_

It was deep beneath the Tower of Hegemon that those chosen for ascension to the ranks of the Adeptus Custodes died. For many of the chosen aspirants, this was not literal death. Certainly, some would be brought into the laboratories buried deep within the bedrock beneath the Imperial Palace never to rise out of them again. Such had always been a danger of the total rebirth performed within the sterile laboratories filled to bursting with genesmiths and bio-alchemists, even when it had been Him who oversaw them.

No, for many this death would be largely metaphorical. For some, this death would not even be truly metaphorical; not all who were brought beneath the Tower of Hegemon rose as Custodians. For those that did, however, their death would entail every piece of their existence being unravelled, everything they had been, were, or could have been would be erased by precision genetic engineering and bio-alchemy. Something would become nothing. The individual would cease to exist. Their bodies would be unmade. Their minds would be emptied and carved apart. Their souls would be unravelled.

What they once were would not simply be forgotten nor simply erased, it would cease to be. It would be as if they had never been anything else; as if their existence had only begun at the moment of their unmaking and only given shape at the moment of their rebirth. They were the noble children of Terra, the infant sons of the most august aristocrats in the Imperium. This fact would cease to be, their present destroyed as thoroughly as their past. They would no longer _be_ anything. They would simply exist.

With their pasts gone, with their present gone, whatever future might have awaited them would cease to be as well. The scions of nobility would die. Something new, beings far beyond mongrel humanity, would be fashioned from the ashes of their former existence.

It was a process that began with the death of an identity, a mind, a soul. It concluded with the birth of a new identity, a new mind, a new soul.

For ten-millennia it had fallen to the Phanetori to oversee every step of this process. Their function had granted them a greater degree of autonomy then many of their brothers and the Phanetori had always exploited that autonomy to ensure the Ten Thousand were never again so disastrously depleted as they had been following the War Within the Webway. They had tirelessly engineered and maintained their twin systems of recruitment; the mass draft of the families who traditionally carried the genetics required for ascension, and the consistent – but lower-intake – volunteers from families of traditionally dubious genetic quality.

The draftees allowed for the replacement of a large number of combat induced casualties, while the volunteers allowed the Order to maintain their numbers as the millennia wore on. The Phanetori had seen to it that recruitment into the Custodes became a cultural artefact of all noble families upon Terra and then ensured that it maintained its cultural momentum throughout the millennia. The notion prevalent amongst the aristocrats that the Custodes voracious appetite for their infant sons was the very thing which marked them as aristocrats and superior to all others was little more than a cultural fiction artificially induced by the Phanetori millennia ago.

Despite the importance of their work, the Phanetori had never numbered more then one hundred. The seventy-three Custodians who were currently counted amongst the numbers of the Phanetori had gathered to execute the draft they had called to replace the losses suffered during one of the Custodes recent engagements off-planet. Following the selection at the Ascensor's Gate, it was to the laboratories beneath the Tower of Hegemon they brought their precious cargo; forty-seven prospective aspirants of ostensibly proper genetic stock.

The Platform of Rebirth held within its guts a wide array of sensors and medicae equipment, yet even it could not burrow down deep enough into the infant's very existence to fully validate a candidate. The powerful machinery buried within its golden core could only invalidate a candidate, detecting points of failure not buried within the subject's baser composition or spiritual nature. So it was that, before even the genesmiths and bio-alchemists, it was into the hands of the chiurgeons that the forms of the black-velvet shrouded infants were placed.

The infants were stripped and thoroughly cleansed by Custodes serfs in an antechamber under the watchful eyes of the chiurgeons who would be responsible for the meticulous examination of the physical and mental existences of the children. Beyond the gateway of the antechamber ancient machinery purred to life; large diamond-glass tubes surrounded by an array of increasingly arcane scanning equipment dominating the sanctum of the chiurgeons. Only five such collections of arcane equipment existed within the entirety of the Imperium, and each of them was in the possession of the Imperial Household.

Most of the equipment was not, in truth, all that rare. In many ways, the fundamentals of even the most esoteric piece of scanning equipment were still in use in the wider Imperium. Individually the equipment was specialized to analyze separate pieces of the human body and mind, the molecular foundations, organisms, organs, bones, nerves, blood, neural pathways, and a dozen other facets of the human being. When combined, the equipment simultaneously analyzed and collated every ounce of information one could glean about a subject's physical and mental existence.

Once complete, the chiurgeon responsible for operating and monitoring the equipment would have access to everything from the subject's atomic structure to their mental state. The most minor of impurities in the subject's physical or mental existence would be swiftly found and should any of the plethora of impurities all subjects possessed prove to be a disqualifying one then the infant would be returned to the care of the Custodes serfs. They would not ascend to the ranks of the Brotherhood, though they would serve all the same.

To sift through the stuff of even a child's existence took time; to do so forty-seven times with the capacity for a mere five would take three days and almost a dozen shifts of chiurgeons. They began their arduous task the moment the first of the children had been scrubbed clean of the accumulated filth from Terra's surface and placed within the diamond-glass tube.

The task was routine for them, each of the chiurgeons in service to the Custodes a veteran of their craft. Their subjects were placed within a harness at the core of the tube, which was then physically and hermetically sealed when the retracted diamond-glass front was elevated back into position. The tube was filled with a relatively common oxygenated liquid and sedative mixture that allowed the occupant to breathe within the hermetically sealed system of the tube, piping, liquid reservoir and liquid filtration equipment.

With their subject suspended in the gel-like liquid, the harness would release and retract to prevent incomplete or incorrect scanning. The cogitators of the scanning arrays spun up and then engaged, bathing the subject in a reddish glow.

The process began and ended twenty-one times uninterrupted and without anything out of the ordinary occurring until an aberration in the process appeared.

The white-robed chiurgeon bringing forward an infant was not an aberration by any means, indeed, were it only the chiurgeon who walked through the reinforced plasteel doors it would be part of the typical, expected process. Except the chiurgeon was not alone when they passed through the doorway, though the haste in their step and the anxiety etched across their face made it clear they dearly wished they had been. The room fell into a lull of confused silence as the towering figure entered the laboratory, the first of its kind to have entered the room in decades.

The tower of golden auramite followed the chiurgeon and their infant cargo from the doorway to the recently vacated and cleansed diamond-glass tube marked with the Gothic numeral _'III'_ at its base. It was with measured haste that the chiurgeon placed the infant into its harness at the centre of the tube, so as to hasten their escape from the looming shadow of the auramite demigod. He said nothing to any of the chiurgeons within the room, providing no other disruption beyond the unignorable physical and mental presence every of his kind possessed. The chiurgeons were veterans of their craft, however, and so they returned to their given tasks with admirable resilience.

The diamond-glass front was elevated back into position. Pressurised air hissed, and the thumping of locks engaging deep within the machinery could be heard over the silence of the laboratory. A cleansing agent had been run through the tube and its various components, breaking apart any germs or remaining clumps of oxygenated liquid from its previous occupant. The orangish, oxygenated liquid that pumped into the tube now was fresh and free of any cross-contamination.

The child was awake when the liquid submerged him. Its grey eyes found that it was no more difficult to see underneath the liquid then out of it, and they stared curiously into crimson lenses. Beneath the crimson lenses, eyes the green of jade stared back with their own, more subdued curiosity.

Mechanical straps across the harness snapped open, the metal filament connected to it retracting the piece of equipment into a compartment at the roof of the tube. The liquid was far too viscous for the child to be moved by gravity or through his own strength, so he hung there, suspended at the centre of the tube. The sedatives laced throughout the liquid began to fill the child's system, his body relaxing into the embrace of the viscous slurry he had been placed within. The banks of cogitators spun up, emitting an incessant thrumming of energy that grew louder until it reached its crescendo and died away as the scanners came online.

The process lasted for six hours, and for six hours the Custodian stood there. While the chiurgeons came and went, speaking in hushed whispers easily heard by his augmented hearing and occupying themselves with fulfilling their duties, he remained static. He did not move from his position, no, he did not even so much as _twitch_ over the course of six hours of intensive scanning. He was a statue carved from auramite, placed within the sanctum of the chiurgeons without so much as a word of warning.

None of them dared speak to him once during those six long hours. It would not be until the examination was over that a chiurgeon would dare approach the towering figure, spurred forwards by a desire to satiate what she believed to be the demigod's interest in her subject.

"Would you… would you like to know the results, Lord Custodian?"

Twin slivers of crimson fixed upon the chiurgeon's form faster than should have been possible or was at all-natural. The chiurgeon flinched visibly at the inhuman movement.

"**In brief, Lady Chiurgeon.**"

His voice was deep, a deepness that could only be achieved by a body expanded beyond natural constraints. For all its depth, though, it was crystal clear even through the distortion of the speakers it was emitted from. It possessed no discernable accent or at least none that any of the diverse chiurgeons who heard it could place.

"I am flattered, my Lord Custodian, but I am no Lady."

"**And I am no Lord.**"

The retort was immediate; as if the Custodian had planned for if not fully expected her renunciation of the title 'Lady'. She quaked slightly at what she imagined to be a harsh censure, a great failure on her part to properly obey the rules of decorum that, in truth, she – nor any other of the chiurgeons – had ever actually been told about.

His voice had not raised by even an octave, though perhaps the stoic articulation served to sow terror better then even naked aggression would have.

"I am sorry, my Lo-," She caught herself before finishing the word her hysteria addled mind now believed to be the gravest of insults one could levy against the demigod before her. Her stumbled over attempt at apologizing a second time was cut off.

"**Be at peace. You may call me Hektor.**"

The diamond-glass rattled silently at the rumble of his voice, every word like a hammer cast from his mouth to lay waste to the world surrounding him.

"I am Elizbieta." She sketched a superfluous curtsey in her medicae robes, giving him a nervous smile fueled more by adrenaline and undisguised terror then genuine joy.

"**Well met, Elizbieta.**" He inclined his head slightly; the greatest tell of the movement being the plumage of crimson horsehair sliding to the side of his conical helmet. "**Tell me of the little one.** **In brief.**"

Some measure of strength returned to her form. The muscles which had become taut beneath her sweat-slick onyx skin relaxed, her breathing and heart rate plateauing from their meteoric climb as she was provided with a task her mind latched upon.

"The subject's physical health and mental state fall well within the acceptable tolerances laid out by Him." She paused; her face sketched in uncertainty over whether she should continue. The conical helmet of auramite tilted to the side in curiosity, as if beckoning her to continue. "The subjects… condition, is, for lack of a better term, _ideal_. It is unlikely – incredibly unlikely – for there to be any sort of physical or mental rejection."

"It is not unheard of, mind you," She continued unprompted, voice trailing on as her nerves compelled her to speak further. "For such a thing to occur. Perhaps once every quarter-of-a-century, yes, but not unheard of nor alarmingly unusual. Short of being improperly administered or purposefully sabotaged, it would be all but impossible for the subject's physicality or mentality to reject ascension."

The term 'reject ascension' was merely the conversational way of saying the subject's body ripped itself to bloody ribbons, ribbons which were then shredded down to their base components. It was the fate that awaited a child who physically, mentally, or spiritually – or any combination of the three – failed to withstand the primordial forces the genesmiths and bio-alchemists unleashed upon them. Such a death was neither swift nor pleasant, given the process could last for weeks and every spark of pain would be felt intimately by the mind and soul that was rending itself apart.

"**Thank you, Chiurgeon Elizbieta. Your assistance is appreciated.**"

The woman performed another curtsey and returned to her station at the bank of cogitators connected to the tube. The viscous liquid within began to thin, allowing the child within it to sink gently down to the padded base of the tube. The quiet hum of the filtration pumps died to be replaced with the thrumming of more powerful pumps designed to drain the entire system of the fluid, a process which took nearly fifteen minutes.

Pressurised air hissed as the diamond-glass front retracted. The child lay sedated upon the foam padding, slick with the oxygenated liquid. From now until the completion of the process the grey-eyed child would remain in some form of sedation. The child's eyes would either open as the eyes of one of the Custodes, or they would never truly open again.

A Custodes serf approached the tube with greater confidence then Chiurgeon Elizbieta had. Having grown to maturity in the shadows and service of the auramite-clad demigod's none of their order found the presence of their masters as terrifying as others did. The serf wrapped the infant in an absorbent fabric and lifted its small frame out of the tube, mindful that the crimson lenses of a Custodian bored into their back. The serfs might not have been afraid of their masters but that did not mean they were any less conscious of the intensity of a Custodian's sheer physical presence.

With the infant in hand, the serf made his way out of the laboratory and into another antechamber leading deeper into the labyrinthine complex. To the spoken and unspoken relief of the chiurgeons, the slab of auramite trailed after the serf. The interest of the Custodian extended to none of their other subjects, and so he left the chiurgeons to perform their duty without his suffocating presence weighing down their minds.

The antechamber was smaller than the sprawling laboratory they had left, though that by no means meant it was small. It was large enough for one hundred of the Order to occupy comfortably, though occupation had never been the room's purpose. It was here that the infants were cleaned and purified of the viscous liquid that clung to their bodies and lingered within their systems, a dozen large tubs of water spread equally throughout the chamber for that very purpose.

The child was taken to one such tub and given over to another serf for purifying. There was the slightest of hushes at the sight of the Custodian, though the serfs never truly ceased performing their duties to take in the presence of one of their masters. The Custodian did not linger within the room, long, powerful strides never slowing from the entrance to the exit.

He had not waited with the infant every moment of the process up to this moment, and there was little point for him to start now. The mundanity of the purification process would not reveal anything new to him, and he felt no compulsion to watch over the little one during such a trivial stage of its journey. He had not watched over it during the day that had passed between its selection and examination by the chiurgeons, rather, a serf had informed him when the little one was to be brought forwards for inspection and he had arrived only then.

So it was that now he strode through the well-lit hallways of the laboratory complex. He did not need to follow the child to know its destination. The chiurgeons reported it pure, and so there was but one place for it to go.

The architecture within the laboratory complex lacked the garish ostentation of other sections of the Imperial Palace. This place had been built in a different time, a different time of different sensibilities when the bloated edifices of Imperial architecture had yet to gain the traction they would in later years. The laboratory was minimalist in decoration and construction, favouring function over form. Well-maintained lumen-strips provided ample lighting in the hallways and chambers constructed from polished white metal.

His long strides carried him deeper into the labyrinthine complex. This deep into the complex there were few other living souls, the majority of the living staff being the chiurgeons and Custodes serfs who never ventured into the oppressive depths he was now within. This was the underground kingdom of the genesmiths and bio-alchemists, of men and women who had given their lives over to the service of the Custodes. Many had toiled in the artificially lit bowels of the Palace for decades or centuries on end, the kiss of the sun upon their skin long forgotten if they had ever known it to begin with.

It was into their experienced hands that the little one would come to rest.

He took a turn into one of the ancillary hallways, leaving the arterial one behind him. Whereas the arterial hallways could comfortably fit five of his brothers should-to-shoulder, the majority of the ancillary hallways dug into Terra's crust were only large enough for a single Custodian to stride down at once. It was rare that one of the Order would find a need to pass through them, given that they were primarily used for maintenance and the dormitories of the mortals who toiled within the complex.

Even after five-hundred years within the Phanetori, he had only traversed down one of these cramped hallways twice. With this as his third time within the bright hallways the colour of white enamel, he was likely the Custodian to have used them the most over the preceding millennia.

His powerful strides carried him past hundreds of doors leading to an assortment of rooms; everything from dormitories, storage rooms, maintenance halls, lounges, libraries, minor laboratories, medicae halls. Everything the chiurgeons, genesmiths and bio-alchemists would require to not only survive but thrive within the underground complex was present along the ancillary tunnels. Many of the mortal's present had been born within Terra's crust, raised and trained to assume the duties of their forebearers within the laboratory complex. Some had been plucked from the surface, of course, the exceptionally talented were desired within the laboratory complex whether they had been born within it or not.

All of them, born within the families of chiurgeons and genesmiths and bio-alchemists or the new-blood introduced into those sprawling lineages, the unifying trait of them all was that they would die within Terra's crust. There was no luxurious end for them, only a lifetime of service in His name and an honourable death when their minds and bodies could no longer function. Their deaths and their service would be remembered within the laboratory complex, but beyond its adamantium gates, none would notice nor care about their passing.

He arrived at a solid plasteel gateway affixed with the symbol of the Ten Thousand; the head of an eagle superimposed over twin lightning bolts set within the centre of an 'I'. The grey plasteel and golden iconography were the first deviations from the uniform enamel white metal that was present throughout the rest of the laboratory complex.

Though he could not see them nor feel their touch, he knew that buried within the gateway a suite of sensors had activated. Runes flashed across his vision informing him of twenty-seven separate types of passive scans alone scouring his auramite clad form, three-times the number that had been fixed upon him throughout his journey. There was an almost inaudible click from somewhere within the gateways mechanisms as his identity was confirmed and the multitude of locks were deactivated. The gateway split open before him, allowing him to enter into the room beyond.

Despite the relative ostentation of its gateway, the room was as sparsely decorated as the rest of the laboratory complex. There was little in the way of furniture within it, and for all that, it was well kept it had not seen any use for millennia. The far wall was dominated by a two-way crystalflex mirror that peered into the sanctum of the genesmiths and bio-alchemists below. It had once served a purpose, perhaps as an observatory for one his kind to watch the genesmiths and bio-alchemists work. The mirror certainly gave that impression, though the truth was long forgotten and ultimately irrelevant.

He crossed the room in five powerful strides and took up a position before the mirror. Whether this room had once served as an observatory or not was irrelevant; it would serve as one now. He peered into the workspace occupied by dozens of genesmiths and bio-alchemists. Reinforced pods of a material harder then even diamond-glass stood in recesses throughout the room, each large enough to hold a fully-grown Custodian. Five were already occupied, the forms of infants little more than dark shadows within the viscous golden liquids that would sustain them during the process of ascension.

The central medicae slab was occupied as well. The infant was undergoing the preliminary stages of the process; this is where what had once been was unmade. He did not know the secrets of the process, and in truth, he did not care to know them. He knew the results all the same, of course, but knowing the conclusion of the process did not grant any insights into the process itself.

Devices, handheld and mounted alike, were brought to bear on the infant laying on the slab. Liquids of a dozen separate colours were administered to the child. It was not the crude surgeries and implantations of the Astartes that gave birth to a warrior of the Ten Thousand, rather, the existence of the infant would be turned upon itself. The body would unmake itself as if its purpose had always been to do so. The mind would unmake itself, uncaring that doing so would spell its death. The soul would unmake itself, utterly at peace knowing that to do so would mean ruination.

The body would forge itself into something new. The mind would forge itself into something new. The soul would forge itself into something new. The natural processes of the child's existence would be suborned by genesmithing and bio-alchemy into both unmaking itself and then remaking itself.

Pressurised air hissed from the collar of his auramite armour. The seals of his helmet released, and the stale bite of recycled air dug into his lungs. He removed his conical helmet and held it within the crook of his arm. He saw the suggestion of his dusky skin and stoic, aristocratic features in the mirror he stared through, the image fading in and out of clarity as the lumen-strips within the laboratory below adjusted to the needs of their masters.

Time ground on as the figures below saw to the completion of the procedure. Nine-hundred-twenty-three minutes after he removed his helmet the genesmiths and bio-alchemists finished the initial steps of the procedure, leaving the sedated form on the medicae slab as little more than a hollowed-out shell of meat. The process of uncreation would take longer to truly finish, scraps of the little one's former existence still clinging onto its being waiting to be scraped away. The process had been started, though, and so the process would largely complete itself without the need for further direct intervention.

There was a grinding noise of machinery behind him, signifying that the gateway was opening once more. He did not need to look to see who it was; armour whirred and thrummed with power as the figure walked into the room. It was the noise of Custodial armour, and of his brothers, few would journey so deeply beneath the surface.

"You spoke." The low timbre of his new companion's voice emerged unmolested by the filters of a helmets vox-speakers. His jade eyes flicked to the side on instinct, cold and assessing. The head of his brother Custodian was bare, olive skin pulled tautly across hard, austere features.

"I apologize, Shield-Captain."

The words were spoken though not truly felt. He respected Shield-Captain Rostam, he would even consider himself close with the older Custodian, but if his brother expected amenable humility in the face of censure then Rostam would be disappointed by his recalcitrance.

"I do not say it as censure, Hektor." The reply was swift and tinged with the mildest of amusement. "I admit, though, that I am curious as to why you did."

"It seemed appropriate at the time."

"Does it no longer seem so?"

"No," He shook his head in the negative to underscore the sentiment. "I still believe it was appropriate."

Rostam made a noise of amusement at the back of his throat while his lips twitched upwards into an expression that might have been a smile.

"I have never seen you as a sentimental individual, Hektor. Comforting weeping mothers, how saccharine of you." The words were not said with any bite to them, rather, they were laced through with genuine amusement and a teasing undertone.

He smiled despite himself.

"Was it also this newfound sentimentality that led you to personally overseeing the little one?"

"No. I have staked a position on the little one's survival, so his fate is now of personal interest."

Rostam spoke no words in response, instead, he made a noise of understanding and nodded his head in acknowledgement.

They both fell into a companionable silence, watching as the genesmiths and bio-alchemists below placed their subject within one of the reinforced pods to be suspended within the golden amniotic fluid. Minutes dragged into hours as the forms below worked to prepare for their next subject, servitors scrubbing clean the layer of accumulated filth upon the medicae slab while soiled equipment was replaced with clean and sanitized equipment. New vials full of liquid took the places of empty vials, medicae tubing was replaced and connected to fresh bags filled with crimson lifeblood.

They maintained their silence while the genesmiths and bio-alchemists saw to the process of replenishing the tools of rebirth. One of the genesmiths disappeared from view, reappearing with the familiar form of the little one cradled cautiously within their arms. Rostam peered down at the infant in what could only be interest.

"You were not wrong to say he was strong, Hektor. He stands as one of only seventeen to have passed the inspection of the chiurgeons."

He hummed in acknowledgement, though in truth his attention was fixed below. The genesmith placed the child onto the medicae slab, their peers swarming around to begin the process anew. Needles were slotted into veins, restraints were connected and tightened. Cogitators whined as power flowed into them once more, arcane arrays of Dark Age technology lowering from their positions on the ceiling. A latticework of psycho-reactive circuits buried within the skin of the medicae table came alive as golden power flowed through them.

"Do you intend to watch over him throughout his ascension?"

"At the pivotal moments, yes. I do not intend to stay down here for fifty-years if that is what you truly desire to know."

"It was."

Rostam stood beside him for a moment longer. Servos hummed with power as he stepped back from the mirror.

"I take my leave of you, then. There is work to be done within the Palace, preparations to be made for however many of the little ones survive."

He turned and brought his gauntleted fist up against his chest in a quiet thumping of auramite, inclining his head in respect all the while.

"Shield-Captain."

Rostam returned the ancient salute and inclined his own head in respect.

"Hektor."

Then Rostam was gone, back through the gateway and into the hallways. Once again, he was alone within the room. He turned back to the mirror, once more observing in silence as the genesmiths and bio-alchemists worked their craft.

The small form of the grey-eyed infant was obscured now, surrounded as he was by the flesh sculptors working their craft upon him. Ancient devices with purposes now known only to a few thrummed with barely restrained power as they were brought to bear against the child. Arcs of silver lightning – barely perceivable from the angle and distance he viewed them from – flashed along the surface of indistinct metallic plates and lashed downwards at the concealed form of the child.

An arm fashioned from adamantium descended, at its end a convex instrument studded with protrusions angled downwards. The instrument lowered down towards the area the lightning had saturated only moments earlier, the lights within the room dimming as power flooded down the cabling along the length of the adamantium arm.

The psycho-reactive circuitry of the medicae slab pulsed furiously with a golden glow that should have been blinding. The dimmed lighting had cast shadows throughout the room that now seemed to deepen in intensity as the false light emitted from the slab suffused the room. Grey shadows became black smears as dark as the void, twisting and writhing along the floors and the walls of the laboratory below. Hoarfrost webbed across the mirror's crystalflex surface, steaming in nonexistent heat while spreading all the same.

The phenomena lasted for seventy-eight seconds. The golden unlight faded, the hoarfrost and the steam did not so much fade or disappear as they simply ceased to be. Lumen-globes flashed to high-intensity, burning away whatever shadows remained within the room. The adamantium arm retracted, the convex instrument trailing clumps of greasy, congealed blood that slid off of its protrusions.

This was only the beginning, both of these early preparatory steps and the process as a whole. Over the next dozen hours, the beginning of the first step would be completed, as the genesmiths and bio-alchemists tore into the infant's base existence to unmake said existence. Throughout the next year, existence would become nonexistence, and something would become nothing.

The next decade would see that nothing once more become something, as the genesmiths and bio-alchemists worked tirelessly to facilitate and encourage the infant's ascension. Though not familiar with the minutia of the process, he was familiar with the broader concept. They were not stitched full of artificial organs and bloated with chemicals like the Astartes; useful though they may be the Astartes were not images of humanities future.

The Custodians, in what he had always considered a very literal sense, _were_ the images of humanities future. To describe the process as an ascension was not something as petty as self-aggrandizement, nor was it something as inane as pretentiousness. The genesmiths and the bio-alchemists unleashed upon the infants bodies the forces of millions of years of evolution to create a paragon of human perfection designed by Him millennia earlier.

Through the medium of the genesmiths and the bio-alchemists, every Custodian was moulded in His image and by His hand. Though they performed the important role of facilitating His touch they were not, in truth, responsible for the creation of a Custodian.

Below, a concave instrument lowered from the ceiling. The instrument came down further up the slab then the earlier instrument had and was doubtlessly placed above the infant's head.

He would maintain his position here, alone and unmoving within the bowels of the catacombs until the little one was submerged within the golden amniotic fluids of its designated pod seventeen hours later. He would return a dozen times over the following fifty years to attend the major stages of the ascension process, returning again and again to the room he now found himself in to observe as an infant grew into something more.

He was the last thing the grey-eyed child had ever seen, and he would be the first thing his newborn brother would see.


	3. Interlude: Ascension

_**AN: Due to an assortment of reasons, the third chapter is taking longer than originally hoped to complete. If you'd like a longer explanation as to what is occurring, then you can find the story under the same name on SpaceBattles along with a more informative post.**_

The infant was dead; this fact was unarguable. On every level one would care to consider – physical, mental, and spiritual – there was nothing left of the infant that had been borne into the Imperial Palace. While it was true that what now lived had once been the infant, to say that they were one and the same would be a gross underestimation of the extent of the changes that had been wrought on the infant's form, mind, and soul. To compare the infant and what now lived would be similar to comparing a fully grown man with the unfertilized egg that had once clung to the walls of his mother's womb.

One would be free to argue over when exactly the infant could be considered dead and the precise nature of that death. If one deemed the requirement for death to be purely physical in nature, then the infant had died forty-two years ago when the last of its baseline organs were replaced and all that remained within its form was based upon the genetic structure He had designed. The physical process of ascension began with the implantation of genetic material into the infant, which – under the auspices of the genesmiths – would go on to wholly replace the pre-existing genetic structure of mongrel humanity.

Implanted within the infant's second year of life, the genetic material contained within it the biological blueprint of a Custodian. Through the meticulous application of their craft, the genesmiths stimulated the spread of that biological blueprint to every cell within the infant's body, thus replacing the genetic information of mongrel humanity with that of a Custodian. Once suffused with that genetic information, the body grew and matured in a manner no different to that of any other infant growing and maturing – save, of course, for the fact that the otherwise unaffected processes responsible for the body's growth created something wholly different from what any other infant would mature into.

In ten millennia, none had wasted the oxygen needed to question where the genetic material had come from. Whether it was stored in time-locked stasis or growing within ancient and arcane cultivation pods, one did not even need to glance at it to know the answer to such a frivolous question. It was through that genetic material – through the sliver of divinity which impregnated every cell of their forms – that the Custodians had always been and always would be more than merely His guardians.

To grow a mortal infant into a member of the Order had never been an easy task, though the difficulties presented by the process grew greater with every century that passed. The conclusion of the process itself had remained untouched and so too had the alchemical reagents required simply for the body's growth and maturity, yet the number of reagents required grew all the same. The mortal processes required for the birth of a Custodian had been forced to grow and adapt over the millennia, the bio-alchemical and genetic lore once employed having not so much been lost as it had been rendered impractical if not impossible to utilize.

To ensure that the Order could continue to raise new Custodians was a perpetual conflict waged within the deepest laboratories of the Imperial Palace by armies of genesmiths, bio-alchemists and chiurgeons. It was a war where victory was simply the absence of defeat, where mankind won merely by having not yet lost.

The changes wrought on the infant went deeper than just the physical form. One would be free to make the argument that death, likewise, was decided on a deeper level than the physical. If one decided that death was instead rooted within the intangible, that death required the erasure of those things which made an individual an _individual_ – the psychological concept of the mind, the memories and experiences which gave birth to the personality – then the infant had died forty-eight years ago. The precious few memories the infant had possessed were easily disposed of and the mind was quickly hollowed out, in the end leaving little more than a void.

As the physical changes progressed, the brain itself saw extensive growth and transformation. The mind, now devoid of any and all information, grew and transformed alongside the physical organ into something utterly alien to its original form.

What was the true extent of the changes wrought on the brain and the mind of a Custodian? As with all of the changes brought about by the ascension process, what was known amongst the genesmiths and the bio-alchemists and the chiurgeons was solely what they had been able to glean over the millennia. He did not leave any written records as to the capabilities of His Custodians, on the minutia of the process or on the genetic mysteries He had utilized to first give birth to their Brotherhood; all that was known was what had been learned through mortal toil.

The physicality of a Custodian was something which could be grasped broadly, though for all its breadth the understanding of the nature of the individual components of a Custodian's biology remained shallow. The material changes wrought upon the brain were as well – or, as it were, as ill-understood as the physical changes undergone by all of a Custodian's biology. The immaterial changes, however, were utterly opaque.

He had, of course, known what changes His hands brought about. It was not simply a belief, though, that He had known the full extent of the ascension process. Psychological and hypnotic indoctrination was impossible to tailor without an understanding of the subject's brain and mind; it was by His hands and His alone that the equipment and processes used for the Psycho and Hypno-indoctrination of a Custodian were created. Though the information implanted had evolved over the millennia the equipment and processes engineered by His hands had remained untouched, and so they remained as the clearest practical evidence as to the extent of His understanding of the biological and psychological changes wrought on His Custodians.

The Psycho and Hypno-indoctrination He designed began only after the body and the mind had acclimated to its new nature. For what now grew in the infant's place the indoctrination process had begun thirty-eight years ago, a decade after the last thoughts of the infant had been wiped away and the mind had been rendered into a void. Into that void was poured millennia of information from tactics and strategy to diplomacy to poetry and everything in-between, skills and traits such as speech and discipline were ingrained into the mind; a Custodian opened his eyes already matured and well-rounded.

They would grow beyond the foundations they awoke with, developing distinct personalities of their own given time. Though unified in duty – the protection of His mortal remains – they were not mere automatons that possessed a thin veneer of individuality. The ultimate expression of this individualism was the myriad approaches the Order held within its ranks as to how best pursue their duty to Him, whether it be through isolationism or interventionism, covert operations or overt operations, diplomacy or violence. Over the millennia, every path conceivable had been tread upon by the Order in their pursuit of fulfilling their singular duty in life.

Of course, this individualism was evident in more ways than just the one. Like mongrel humanity, a Custodian possessed personality quirks and traits not perfectly replicated in any other. There were those amongst their brethren they preferred the company of over others and some whom they actively disliked the company of. They preferred performing certain activities over others and were encouraged to pursue the activities which they found most engaging, regardless of what those activities may be.

The changes brought about by the ascension process reached deeper still, however. On this level, though, there was little to be gleaned through science and logic; the soul of a Custodian was His domain and His domain alone. When it had been first brought within the laboratories of the genesmiths and bio-alchemists fifty years ago, the infant had possessed a recognizably human soul. Like most mortal souls, it was little more than a smouldering ember destined to be swiftly smothered by the galaxy.

It was upon the medicae slab that powers and technology unmatched outside of the Imperial Palace had been brought to bear against that fragile and mortal soul. One might argue that the day the infant had truly died was that day fifty years ago, the day when the infant's soul was shattered and reformed. Certainly, it was the day on which any other future the infant might have possessed unravelled and faded away – all that was left for the infant beyond that point was death or service in His name.

One could say that it was upon the medicae slab with their souls reduced to splinters that the Custodians first interacted with Him. It would be a statement that possessed a modicum of truth to it, though one that failed to consider the context of the matter.

Only a sliver of His power – nothing more than what already bled through into reality within the Throneroom – was collected and directed through the psycho-reactive circuitry buried within the Palace's foundations and into the laboratory complex. Though it was diminished from the long journey away from its source, the raw power was still enough to burn away a mortal soul if not properly utilized. With the guidance and assistance of the bio-alchemists that power was more than enough to unravel the mundane human soul possessed by an infant.

Yet even when that power was used to reform the soul into something greater there was nothing one might consider conscious interaction. The power was His, but the hands that guided it were mortal in nature. Perhaps on some level He noticed, but there were none who could possibly provide a definitive answer to such a question. The infant, for its part, was certainly incapable of noticing anything spiritual in nature or much of anything else by that point.

In the end, though, whether one believed that the infant had died fifty, forty-eight or forty-two years ago was academic. The infant was dead and something new had taken its place in reality. As the pod it had grown within for fifty years was moved from its alcove within the laboratory complex beneath the Palace, the potent cocktail of drugs that had sedated it for five decades began wearing away.

Soon enough consciousness would return, and with it would come an eternity of ceaseless service in His name and His alone.


	4. Interlude: The Battlements

_**AN: Chapter three is half-way complete. Chronologically, this interlude takes place shortly after the second chapter.**_

The arctic winds that battered the Palace's battlements beat against his auramite form, breaking upon him like the waves of Old Earth against rock. His crimson plumage writhed wildly in the harsh gales, the fibres whipping this way and that as the winds shifted. All noise was lost here, the incessant howling of nature blotting out any other sound that his helmet's audio-receptors might have registered.

A mortal man might have been blown off the battlements, cast down from the lofty heights of the walls and smashed upon the ground far below. Terra's weather was fury incarnate, the apoplectic raging of a world that would have been left for dead if it had not been humanities cradle.

Gothic runes flashed across his vision and a pulse of nerves saw them disappear, replaced by the quiet buzzing of static through his vox system for barely a quarter of a second.

"_Hektor._"

The direct vox-link request had told him who the speaker was but even if it had not, he knew the voice well.

"Shield-Captain."

Sensors buried within his auramite armour and linked to his nervous system alerted him to the fact that something was moving on his right. He shifted his head a dozen degrees to aim his visual receptors in the movement's direction, but the visual feed only showed a swarm of white as the storm raged. Target finders provided an accurate outline of his environment and highlighted the Custodian shaped object approaching from five-hundred metres out.

He dismissed the aiming reticle that had been imposed upon his retina with a nerve-pulse.

"_You find the oddest places to brood, Hektor._"

It was easy enough for him to picture the slight upwards tilt of the lips upon Rostam's austere features.

"Yet you always manage to find me, Rostam. Your presence alone would ensure my swift failure to see a Blood Game through."

A low and short chortle, no doubt consciously transmitted across the vox, was Rostam's response.

He returned his attention forwards, gaze fixed upon the outlines of where the mountains that made up what remained of the Himalazia stood. It was difficult to imagine a time before the Palace and all which that entailed, a time when the Himalazia was a mountain range that reached to the stars rather than the flattened plateau the Imperial Palace had been built upon. A time when Terra was nothing more than fractured, warring bands of barbarians. A time before the Master of Mankind grasped the reins of humanity.

In his peripheral vision streaks of auramite were barely visible through the snowfall of the raging blizzard. Transmitting information directly through his nervous system, his armour's sensor suite left him intimately aware of his surroundings. Rostam's distance – half-a-metre – came to his mind without prompting.

Visibility had deteriorated since he had first journeyed out along the wall. Severe weather around the Palace had decreased significantly since its foundations had been laid, and the formerly frozen environment had become reasonably temperate throughout most of Terra's orbital cycle. Storms as severe as this were rare, perhaps a once in a decade occurrence compared to the monthly blizzards that had dominated the Himalazia in the millennia now long past.

"_Valoris has returned from his latest off-world sortie._"

"I have heard."

"_Galahoth intends to clip his wings._"

His face twisted into an expression of incredulousness. He looked over at Rostam fully, eyes pinned on where the sensor-induced outline reported the Shield-Captains helmeted head to be.

"_The Captain-General intends to restrict all off-planet travel._" Such a thing had long been Galahoth's ambition, even before he had ascended to the position of Captain-General half a century ago. "_He allowed himself to be negotiated down from completely prohibiting off-world travel, and such a concession garnered him the support necessary to implement his travel restriction._"

While it was true that they were already restricted by the aptly named Edict of Restraint, said Edict had only prevented the Order from leaving Terra _in force_. Such wording had not been accidental; neither Captain-General Constantine Valdor nor the Primarch Roboute Guilliman had been known for the imprecise application of language. While many of the Order did not leave the confines of the Palace, there had always been, still was, and would continue to be a need for Custodian strike-forces to leave Terra's surface to ensure the Emperor's protection.

Trajann Valoris, young though he may have been, had attained the rank of Shield-Captain barely thirty years ago due in large part to the martial and command abilities which he utilized with ruthless effectiveness during such sorties. He was both well respected and exceptionally accomplished given his five centuries of service; granted further several centuries to gain experience and expand his support outside of the Order's combat-oriented sections Valoris could very well rise to the position of Captain-General.

"I cannot imagine Valoris simply submitted to such a decree."

Rostam's low snort was answer enough.

"_He did not. He is also not alone in such defiance._"

"Do we stand in defiance of the Captain-General as well, Rostam?"

It was far from an unfounded question. Though far from being the home of reformists, the Phanetori had traditionally been opposed to the strain of isolationist conservativism Galahoth embodied. On a personal level, Rostam had been amongst the last to accede to Galahoth's appointment as Captain-General during the assembly of 113.M41.

"_Not yet. It is not us Galahoth must concern himself with, though. Tribune Launceddre has sided with Valoris on the matter, citing the importance of the sorties in the continued protection of the Palace and Him._"

Tribune Andros Launceddre had served as master of the Hetaeron Guard for the past sixty years. Though his comrades were sworn to silence during their solemn duty, the Tribune would not move so openly against the Captain-General without having consulted his brothers. The Tribune spoke for the Hetaeron Guard, and for the immediate guardians of His mortal shell to openly turn against a Captain-General was unprecedented. They would not have taken such a stance if they were not utterly convinced of the necessity of it.

"_Galahoth has backed himself into a corner, to borrow a mortal phrase. He has worked diligently to burn away the respect which saw him elevated to his post against all protestations, he has tirelessly sought to multiply his opponents and meticulously seen to it that they banded together against him._" There was a tangibly bitter silence as Rostam's dry voice finished speaking his acidic words. "_Were he to exert his energies on worthwhile pursuits rather than his own self-destruction we would be significantly better off._"

The Order had not been crushed beneath the weight of the millennia as others had been, yet the millennia had taken their toll all the same. Once, the thought of such seemingly petty politics infesting the upper echelons of the Order would have seemed ludicrous, yet here they were all the same.

"I assume we will be in defiance of the Captain-General soon enough, then."

"_Yes. I will require my second if we are to link arms with the Tribune and Valoris, and to that end, I intend to name you Prefect of the Phanetori._" Mortals might have called the elevation to such a position an honour, though to do so implied pride and such a trait had never found purchase within the mind of a Custodian.

"The Captain-General is unlikely to approve of such a move."

"_It remains my prerogative to elevate a brother to the position of Prefect within the Phanetori. Galahoth's opinion of the matter is irrelevant._"

His silence was acknowledgement enough, and there was little else to be discussed on the matter as they were. Neither of them made any move to leave the battlements just yet though.

"_I must know before we continue any further,_" Rostam began after a minute of silence. "_are we in agreement on this matter?_"

"I am hurt, Rostam," His tone made it clear that he was anything but hurt. "that you would think otherwise."


End file.
